I'm not an Emacs user, but with all kinds of software like this, I find that the strengths lie not in what makes it popular but what makes it lasting. If too mu

I'm not an Emacs user, but with all kinds of software like this, I find that the strengths lie not in what makes it popular but what makes it lasting. If too much is changed in Emacs, scores of users will cry havoc and switch to XEmacs (or something) and it will become even less popular. Emacs has a stable core user base and as far as I can tell, it's recently getting some traction among a new generation who are exactly the kind of users that would likely jump ship as soon as a lot of "modernization" started happening. If they wanted something "modern", they wouldn't opt for Emacs in the first place. It's not like there's a lack of choice: IDE:s and editors adhering to current trends and concepts within UI/UX design are plentiful. They have sought out Emacs because it is uniquely Emacs and not yet another Sublime/VS Code/Atom. Editors aren't exactly comparable to desktop environments, but when Gnome 3 was conceived for similar reasons of following design trends and thinking afresh, we suddenly also had Cinnamon, MATE and Budgie instead of just KDE and Gnome. Not that I mind diversity, but it's a fine example of alienating a user base. Now, consider how conservative an Emacs user of today probably is. I find that one of the few things I still truly enjoy about computers is that there is stubborn software left for stubborn people to use. Slackware, Emacs, fvwm, xterm... Familiarity, not innovation. That's worth something, too.